PRESS RELEASE: URCA Issues Final Determination & Order in Investigation into Cable Bahamas Limited’s Pay Television Quality of Service
NASSAU, THE BAHAMAS (5 DECEMBER 2022): The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (‘URCA’) issued a Final Determination and Order to Cable Bahamas Limited (‘CBL’) following URCA’s investigation into the quality of service of CBL’s pay television service. Among other things, URCA fines the licensee 2.025% of its monthly recurring pay TV charges for the year 2021.
The investigation, commencing July 2021, was in response to numerous complaints from customers following CBL’s price applications to restructure/repackage its pay television packages in October 2020 and January 2021 for residential and business customers respectively. Specifically, URCA’s investigation reviewed recurring issues including outages, error messages, and pixelated channels.
URCA presented its preliminary findings to the Licensee in August 2022 and received CBL’s response the following month. With consideration, URCA ordered the licensee to resolve the error messages and pixelation related to its pay TV services within a three-month period while, at the same time, providing regular communication to its customers and the Regulator. CBL must also complete its set-top box replacement programme as soon as practicably possible.
URCA maintains that the levied 2.025% fine, based on recurring pay TV charges for 2021, is commensurate with the investigation’s findings that CBL was aware of faults on its network and prevented the faults from reoccurring within the 30 days of repair. Additionally, CBL failed to ensure that relevant staff were adequately informed on how to resolve related complaints and that these complaints were indicative of widespread issues that the service provider failed to appropriately address.
CBL has thirty days from the issuance of the Final Determination and Order to pay the fine.
The Final Determination can be found here.
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Media Contact:
Corporate and Consumer Relations Department
Utilities Regulation & Competition Authority
Telephone: (242) 396-5242
Email: info@urcabahamas.bs
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